


And the whirlwind

by gwyneth rhys (gwyneth)



Category: Logan (2017) - Fandom, Wolverine (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Laura Is a Brave Little Toaster, Parent-Child Relationship, Telepathic Bond, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 21:23:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13132500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwyneth/pseuds/gwyneth%20rhys
Summary: It doesn’t really surprise her that she hears Logan in her head—she thinks it should, yet somehow it doesn’t.





	And the whirlwind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mpatientdreamr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mpatientdreamr/gifts).



She’s not the oldest, or the biggest. But Laura’s pretty sure she’s the strongest—not the way Rictor is with his power, the force that can make a big truck flip over. The past few days have taught Laura that her kind of strength is Logan’s kind of strength—to think and to fight for others and then to live long enough so you can heal. She already knew she could kill. It’s another kind of strength to live with it when you do. Just like Logan said. 

As the children walk to the border she can see some of them struggling to keep up; they need her kind of strength. “Aquí,” Laura says, and takes Rebecca’s arm, steers her to a rotting log. She digs the water bottle out of Rebecca’s pack and uncaps it for her. “Un poco.” They have enough to last till the border from what they took out of the trucks, but only if they’re careful. But Delilah could make ice that will melt, so maybe they will be okay.

 _Attagirl_ , she thinks she hears her father say, but it’s just the wind that moves so quickly through this pass. 

The place they buried Logan in had green and water and—

All of the other children are happy for the rest. When Rebecca is ready, she nods and Laura helps her up. They all wait for her to begin walking. Rictor should be the leader, but they think she’s the strongest, she supposes, maybe because Logan is her father. _Don’t be what they made you._ She doesn’t want to be the leader, Rictor knows where they are supposed to go, he knows the people they’ll meet.

But her father hadn’t wanted to be a leader or take care of anyone, either, and still he did it. I’m scared, she thinks, as if they’re talking. I don’t know how to do this. 

_Sure you do, kid._ It’s not the wind, she can hear the words in her mind, and Laura smiles. _What if I make a mistake?_

_Then you pick yourself up and keep going and try not to screw it up so much next time._ Rebecca sees her smiling and gives her a curious look as they walk through the forest. It doesn’t really surprise her that she hears Logan in her head—she thinks it should, yet somehow it doesn’t; instead it’s more of a curious feeling. He didn’t have that sort of power.

What’s the opposite of a weapon? Laura wonders. Does it have an opposite? 

_There’s no opposite, kid. The closest you can get is building, repairing, creating. And helping._ He’s not really there in her mind, Laura knows, not like Charles was. But she also knows he hated doing all those things, so he wouldn’t tell her that if he didn’t believe—he never wanted to care and still always cared too much. That’s what Charles told her. Even though Gabriela said Logan was her father, Laura would have known he was, anyway.

 _Yeah, you’re a regular chip off the old block._ What does that mean? she asks him in her head. _Don’t worry about it._

It will be dark soon. Jonah can see in the dark, so he can go first: they’ll hold hands, make a train. _Choo-choo._ “We shouldn’t stop to sleep,” Laura tells Rictor. “We’ll miss them if we do.” The fight put them behind schedule, they can only cross if they make it there by mid-day. They do have to stop again for rest and to eat a little, and Laura looks around at the other children. Some of them still have injuries because they don’t heal the way she does; she’ll have to keep an eye on them. 

_A home, people who love each other, safe place. You should take a moment and feel it._

Out loud, she says, “Charles told you that.” Then she realizes she’s saying it and the rest of them are looking at her, waiting, like they’re supposed to know what that means. _Yeah,_ her father answers. _Wasn’t wrong, I guess._

She tries to explain to her friends in Spanish so Logan doesn’t have to listen. It doesn’t really make sense, but they believe her anyway. They’ve all seen stranger things, or sadder ones. Once, as they were driving, Logan wondered why she was the only one of all the children Charles had talked to. At the dinner, Laura realized it made sense: they were familia, in their way. She’d never known what that was before, and then she had it for a few hours—and then it was gone.

Gabriela had told Laura after the operation that she was made from Logan, he was her father. Since she healed like him, they started training her to fight almost right after she woke up—she wouldn’t have known anything had happened except...ay, she felt so heavy. The first time her claws came out, she cried from fear. But the better she fought, the more scared Gabriela was. “Mijita,” she’d said, before the escape, “it will be all right, we will find your father. He will protect you and love you like I do.” Even though she was a little girl, Laura knew that probably wouldn’t happen. 

The wind through the trees out here has its own kind of voice. She likes the smell of the dry needles that cover the dirt, the sound of water rushing in a stream. They hear birds and other animals and at first some of her friends are scared, but Laura reminds them that they’re strong together. They can even fight a bear if they have to.

But it also makes her think. _I need a name like you, like The Wolverine_. What can I be, Laura wonders, and looks up at the hills and trees and wide-open sky for something that she could be. _You’re not an animal, or a thing. You already got a name._ But Laura still wants one. It should be something cool. 

Once they’re at the safe place, she’ll ask for advice, maybe the people they’re meeting give all the mutants new names—after all, what they have now was only what they were given in Mexico. They don’t really mean anything. Though...the feeling when her father called her _Laura_ the first time...she’d never imagined you could feel that way, not even with Gabriela.

Her father had a lot of names. “Daddy,” Laura says into the wind, because that’s the one she likes most of all. She only had the chance to say it when he was gone. Now, though, they’re going somewhere they can look up to the sky and smell the trees and the earth and feel sun on their skins. And Laura will say his name to everyone, so they never forget him and that he was her father. 

Daddy’s not really in her mind, she knows that, but still he says, _I’m right here._

**Author's Note:**

> So many thanks to minim-calibre for all the help and advice. ♥

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] And the Whirlwind](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14141061) by [dapatty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dapatty/pseuds/dapatty)




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